Last month, the leader of a protest in Shelby gathered the community and conquered fears and critics.
By Stevie Brooks
Beacon Media
When I got home the night of the big protest I helped organize in Shelby at the end of last month, I was still texting and chatting with various people who had participated.
I fell deeply in love with every single one of them at that moment.
It had been a long day and an even longer journey to a protest organized around resisting the inhumane executive orders flying out of the White House daily. Here’s what I saw at the rally: It was a beautiful, sunny Sunday. God appeared to be smiling down on the Shelby court square and the more than 100 people who slowly filed onto the lawn. Faces we knew and loved. During those first moments, I was hopeful for the rest of the day.
At first, I wasn’t sure how things would go. Online, all I saw was some version of, “Protests don’t do anything.”
This sentiment was expressed by those who didn’t agree with us, and a couple people who did. Like any small town grassroots organizer, I knew that a protest around the court square could either be a success, with lots of people and energy — or a bust.
In 2020, out of some combination of frustration and loneliness, I made a local Facebook group while in my basement on my treadmill. Shelby Women For Progress was born.
In my basement, not my parent’s, as was suggested by some of the snide commenters.
I had seen this sentiment before. People’s Christian values — that’s what their Facebook page said they had, anyway — seem to melt away at the thought of donating food when our Facebook group organized for immigrant or trans lives.
During the protest I felt a sense of power seeing the turnout and the passion written across faces and homemade signs. As I hollered to get everyone together for a picture, it felt like a family getting together on Christmas morning. Holding each other’s shoulders tight to come together within the frame. All of us prepared for the fight ahead and loving one another.
I saw so many of my friends all in one place. My friend Michelle who operates a farm came rushing by me; Michelle grows what I believe is some of the best produce in Shelby and has a blog called “Growing the Good Life” where she can help you grow your own food as well. I luckily have Michelle right down the road and due to my lack of a green thumb, I will often find various vegetables tucked in a box or bag by my front door.
Michelle didn’t spend much time with me, just saying, hey, I gotta go find daddy.” who had already found his place among the other participants. The dads in Shelby around here aren’t referred to by their name but simply, “daddy.”
Another woman pulled me aside. I knew her face and she seemed to know mine. “Stevie, I was your librarian at Shelby High School,” she told me. I looked at her and felt like I was once again 16 years old in that library. They were all there.
The need for support was more important now than ever, and the amount of community and neck hugging that was displayed could be likened to church.
I arrived home that evening still texting and chatting with various people who had participated. Deeply in love with every single one of them. Knowing that our coming together had made at least 100 people feel a little safer and accepted that night. I turned to social media and began to draft up our group’s Facebook post. I watched the videos and pictures over and over trying to find the right thing to say. Out here doing the LORD’s work. Out here doing everything that many Christians didn’t do that Sunday — some had driven by, flipping us off, waving flags, and trying to mock us by playing “Ice Ice Baby” in a display of abject cruelty.
But despite the noise, we barely heard a sound. The love was loud in the church of our own making, and we were all better for it.
